Bad Colonel! No Eagles!

CORRECTION: We must humbly apologize for having used an incorrect picture, which was believed to be correct at the time. The substituted picture is described as the actual Lt. Col Bateman being discussed, derived from his Facebook page.

This is an open letter, of sorts, to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bateman, a "second amendment-hating ... active military commander" who, according to Paul Joseph Watson writing for Prison Planet.com, December 6, 2013, composed an article for Esquire magazine in which he advocated a total ban on all firearms, and closing down all gun manufacturers except for those who produce weapons for the federal government.

Apparently he threatened a blogger who had the gall to disagree with him, vowing to "pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers" and allegedy issuing veiled death threats. "You will be disarmed," it says here. "The state will have a monopoly on firepower." He even schemes to make it illegal for most types of guns to be inherited. "I'm willing to wait until you die," he tells us, "hopefully of natural causes".

He apologizes for a future in which she will die.

Robert Bateman

The man has, in fact, a six-point program for creating a future in which the Second Amendment -- and, most likely, the entire Bill of Rights, because that's typical with hypocritical clowns like him -- would become a dead letter. Why would he want to do that? To create a more peaceful society, of course -- less violence and death -- and if you won't willingly cooperate you will be killed in the house-to house searches.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to this military genius that gun laws are enforced at gun point. You say you want less violence and death, Bob? I wonder how that's going to work out in a nation of 100 million Americans who have obeyed their last gun law, holding 750 million "firearms of modern design in good working order". Will you be out front leading the campaign, Bob, or at home, hiding under your bed?

You appear to have learned nothing from history or human nature, Bob, from the Roaring Twenties or the War on Drugs. Following any prohibition, there's always more, not less of the prohibited commodity. Guns will be everywhere, most of them silenced and fully automatic.

Because ... why not?

My father was a lifelong career military officer who understood the phrase "Duty, Honor, Country" in a way you never will. He flew dozens of combat missions over Europe during World War II, was shot down, and spent a year in Stalag Luft III, a prisoner-of-war camp. He retired as a Major after 30 years, because he blew the whistle on intructors selling test answers to officers at a Strategic Air Command school at Mather Air Force Base in the 1950s. Instead of rewards and promotion, he had to be hidden away by his political allies, in the Arctic.

It is disgusting to think that you remain in the military, while better men than you are being purged by a rogue administration, led by a probable illegal alien and communist, because they will refuse to fire on their fellow Americans who won't give up their guns. When I was in high school, neighbors of mine in the First Air Commandos at Hurlburt Field were among the first Americans to die in Vietnam, beheaded by the Viet Cong, or eaten alive by land crabs, believing that they were defending the rights you now threaten so casually to abrogate.

You are a disgrace to the uniform worn by my dad and millions of other Americans down through history who thought they were answering a call to protect the lives, liberties, and property of their fellow Americans.

I must confess that when I first read the nonsense you'd written, I thought you were probably a fourteen-year-old kid in his pajamas, somewhere, sitting behind a keyboard in his mother's basement, making empty threats simply to enjoy the flap they generated. That's what you sound like, Bob. It's pretty easy to stir gun-owners up; they've been relentlessly defamed and persecuted for so many decades by twisted, broken, sick, moral cripples like Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein.

More than anyone, however, your rhetoric and tone make me think of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, whose mental health was never properly looked into once he began issuing threats to those around him, and who killed thirteen innocent individuals at Fort Hood in 2009 and injured thirty more.

There was a time, Bob, when concepts like decency and honor meant something, a time when, had an officer (British, of course) shamed himself as you have, he would have taken his Webley revolver and a single cartridge into the next room and done the right thing. But those times are long past, Bob, and what do you know of decency and honor?

We have been learning the hard way that frustrated "progressives" are among the most dangerous entities on the planet. They turn out to be behind the vast majority of notorious and brutal public shootings. They seem to have no brakes, no self-control, like ordinary human beings. Nor do they seem aware that other people are as real as they are.

I believe that violence could be right around the corner for you, Bob, that you should be separated from the Army now, "for the good of the service", and put away where you can't hurt yourself or anybody else.

So I will predict a different future for you than the future you have predicted for us. I'm a science fiction writer, and that's my job. I caution you, don't try this at home; I'm better at it than you are.

It starts with a militarily marked van pulling up to the curb in front of your office, your home, or the retirement community to which you have been committed. Two burly orderlies get out and enter the building.

In a few minutes they emerge holding you between them, wearing leg irons, handcuffs, and belly chains. Make too much noise, you will be gagged. The media will have been alerted; there will be cameras. Your neighbors will stand around gawking and talking to the microphones. It won't matter if you're frog-marched, carried bodily, or rolled out in a wheelchair with a bottle of oxygen in your lap. The orderlies will put you in the back of the vehicle behind a wire partition and drive away.

After a flight somewhat reminiscent of the movie Con Air or The Fugitive, you will be driven in another military vehicle (the new airport is still under construction) to a tiny rust-belt municipality in western Pennsylvania called Nuremberg, specifically to a newly constructed Gothic-style building patterned after those in another place, a place in Germany, called Nuremberg, in which all those Nazi military and civil officials were tried for their crimes against humanity.

You may remember how that turned out.

Charges against you will include crimes against the Constitution of the United States, violation of the solemn oath you took as an Army officer to uphold and defend that Constitution, and, if it can be proven that you harbored your present views when you took that oath, perjury.

Unlike the original Nuremberg tribunals, you will be alotted your full Warholian fifteen minutes. Your trial will be carried -- along with those of many others -- on cable channels dedicated to such entertainment, and the Internet, where the most interesting or amusing segments from your trial will be exhibited over and over again on YouTube.

The proceedings will be fair but fast, conducted before a jury of the people whose rights you have violated. Once you are convicted, you will be transported by various means to San Francisco, and taken to a brand new 100-story windowless prison, built especially for government miscreants like you, on Alcatraz Island. Constructed entirely of black obsidian-like glass that glitters in the sun, it will become one of the most-photographed objects in the world. All confinement will be solitary, although CNN will be piped into your cell on a 24 hour basis.

Inside the prison without windows, Alcatraz's infamous Rule of Silence will be maintained at Taserpoint. Meals will be simple but healthy, from menus supplied by your fellow inmate, Michelle Obama. Outside, Japanese and other tourists on excursion boats will be delighted to pay for chunks of meat with an expired sell-by date, so they can chum the already-shark-infested waters of the bay around the Rock.

Every day you will be taken for exercise to the roof, a glassy smooth surface without guards or guard-rails, where you may interact with your fellow convicts: mayors and city councilmen, governors and legislators, bureaucrats of every rank and description, Senators, Congressmen, Cabinet members and Presidents. The wind is always strong at altitude in San Francisco, out in the middle of the bay. Should you decide you can't take any more, you are free to be blown over the edge by the wind, pushed over by your former colleagues, or simply to jump, yourself.

Your bones will remain at the base of the building as a warning -- or encouragement -- to others. At long last you will be of service to America.

That's the future I'm working to realize, Bob, and there are millions more like me who share my dreams. I suppose you could make amends before it's too late, abjectly apologizing to everyone you've threatened, insulted, and offended. But that would leave a question hanging.

Why should anyone believe you?

Author and lecturer L. Neil Smith is Senior Editorial Consultant for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. A fifty-year veteran of the libertarian movement, he is the Author of 33 books including The Probability Broach, Ceres, Sweeter Than Wine, And Down With Power: libertarian Policy In A Time Of Crisis. He is also the Publisher of The Libertarian Enterprise, now in its 17th year online.

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